Monthly Archives: February 2014

So upon making it back to my university archives I began looking through the archived school news papers which have luckily been printed into book form making it really easy to navigate. However, as you can imagine, there is a lot to go through for around four years of publishing. I only got through the 1914-15 publications which did not provide too much insight into the general feelings towards the war. There were brief mentions of it in hopes that soon peace would be restored. The most interesting finds in these were more pictures of the campus at the time. Towards the end of my appointment I decided to skip ahead to 1918-19 to see what I had to look forward to and struck gold. There were articles titled “Shepherd College at War” and issues printed in early 1919 included an entire list of every person affiliated with the school who served (some were highlighted even more in later issues), obituaries for those who died, information on the Spanish Flu, obituaries for those who died from the disease, and pictures of returning veterans. More information on all of this will come once I actually get to diligently read through it all.

If anyone finds a name of a soldier who died in the war, they are easily found if they are buried over seas. Use the American Battle Monuments Commission website www.ambc.gov. It is very easy to use and if anyone needs help let me know, but the site is pretty self explanatory. The information given is helpful too as it gives a date of death, regiment, division, and rank of each soldier.

If they are not buried over seas it will be harder to find, but your best bet is the site www.findagrave.com. This site is a little harder to use, but often times it is linked to ancestry.com searches.

This is the plaque found on Knutti Hall in dedication to those from Shepherd who fought in WWI. Listed are 13 names of men who “gave their lives for their country” and it mentions that 197 other men from Shepherd fought in the war. Upon researching (since I had a hunch that not even 197 people were enrolled in the school at the time) some of those who were named were alumni. So that goes into consideration of who is being counted into that 197. I am in the process of researching the names and hope to give further information on those listed. Furthermore I would like to find a list of all those from Shepherd who fought in the war. If anyone has any information on how to find something like that out it would be greatly appreciated, though I do visit the archives (finally!) on Tuesday, so perhaps I will find it there. There is also a plaque in town that lists names from various wars, but the two names listed under WWI are also listed on the first plaque.

I have a very basic vision for what I want the Shepherd University site to look like when the project comes together. As far as the overall look of the site, I enjoy how this blog looks so I would kind of like it to have an overall feel like this. Content will hopefully go as the outline below

Welcome Page

This will have a welcoming message with broad information on Shepherd University during WWI. From there the user will be able to navigate to the other sections of the site.

Shepherd University section

This section will give more in depth information on Shepherd and include the sub sections below. The sources to be used for this section will include old school news papers, year books, and whatever else the university archives have to offer.

Campus Layout

Courses

Important figures (veterans, professors, etc.)

Campus Organizations

Community Section

This section of the site will be for the surrounding area of the university. It will talk about the communities close by and how they were affected by using sub sections that will be listed below. The information for this part of the site will come from mostly secondary sources on each community such as already published books and websites. But depending on co-operation from the community archives it could include a lot of primary sources as well.

Shepherdstown

Sharpsburg

Harpers Ferry/Storer College (possibly separate sections)

Charlestown

Important Community figures (mostly veterans)

I am also considering including community figures as part of the different communities instead of having it be its own category. But that will likely depend on how much information I actually get on the individuals in the community.

In addition I would like to include a timeline in the site. I was having trouble working it, but if I figure it out it looks like a very nice tool to utilize and just had an overall nice look to it that could allow the site to be interactive for the visitor.

Any suggestions on the categories or subcategories/ content will be appreciated. Also if anyone has tips for using the timeline tool I would really appreciate that.

A study of Shepherd University and the surrounding area during World War I